[Multilingual Monday] Homphones and Homonyms
Today we're talking about hompohnes and homonyms -- "tale" and "tail", "hire" and "higher", "presence" and "presence", "butt" and "but", "site" and "site," and of course "too," "two," and "two." Depending on one's variant of English other words can also be homophones -- "merry" and "Mary", "awful" and "offal", "ask" and "axe', "hour" and "our", &c. While these words share a pronunciation, that's all they share. These are frequently called "homonyms," but a homonym has the same spelling as well, which means that a word with the same spelling and the same pronunciation can have vastly different meanings -- a "fluke" can be the end of an anchor, a kind of fish, a stroke of luck, and so on.
Examples in other languages:
FRENCH: I've run into plenty of homphones in my short experience -- mer, mère, maire, "sea", "mother", "mayor"; sang, cent, sans, sent, "blood", "100", "without", "smell"; vers, vair, verre, vert, vers, "fur", "worm", "glass", "green", "toward"; vingt, vint, vin, "20", a form of "to come", "wine"; cours, cour, court, class, courtyard, form of "to compete". I'm much less experienced so I'm unsure with homonyms -- vers is one of the few I can think of ("towards" or "verse"), but I'm sure there are more!
JAPANESE: Because of the sheer number of loanwords from Chinese -- a language which contained tones and consonants that Japanese didn't -- many characters have the same pronunciation. Several famous sentences are made with heterographs: 貴社の記者は汽車で帰社した, KISHA no KISHA wa KISHA de KISHA shita, "The news reporter from your company returned via steam train," or 橋の端を箸をもって走る, HASHI no HASHI wo HASHI wo motte HASHIru, "Running to the end of the bridge with chopsticks." Single-word examples include itai -- 遺体 - "dead body" or 痛い - "painful"; shinkou -- 振興 - "promotion", 信仰 - "religious belief", 進行 - "advancement", 侵攻 - "invasion", 親交 - "intimacy"; and koushin? There's tons of possibilities here, including 更新, "update, renewal"; 倖臣, "favourite colour"; 口唇, "lips"; 行進, "parade"; 交信, "telecommunications"; 後身, "after (how someone looks after surgery, for example)"; 高進, "acceleration"; 恒心, "steadiness", and about 7,572 others. These words could, concievably, all be homonyms if written in kana (for example, on older computers or by children). Loan words can be subject to ambiguity if the word is ambiguous in its source language -- テープ, teepu, "tape", can refer to scotch tape, an audio tape, &c., just like in English.
HEBREW: Current Israeli pronunciation has made several consonants identical in pronunciation -- א and ע are now both pronounced as a glottal stop, and ק and כּ are both /k/, and so on. This has led to several words becoming homophones that may have not been homophones earlier -- קוֹל, "voice" and כֹּל , "all", are both kol; את, the accusative marker, אט, "shovel", and עט, "pen", are all et. Homonyms include טס, tas, "fly" or "tray"; למה, lama, "llama" or "why"; סב, sav, "he turned around" or "grandpa".
CHEROKEE: Words that are pronounced similarly have the same spelling in Cherokee, so there are no heterographs (everything is spelled as it is pronounced), so sometimes only spoken pitch or context can differentiate certain words -- ᎠᎹ can be either "salt" or "water", depending upon pitch (and younger speakers tend to seldom use pitch!). Other times even the pitch is the same, as in ᎧᎹᎹ, kamama, which is either an elephant or a butterfly. ᏗᎬᏜᏗᏍᎩ, dikdladisgi, can be either a fire truck or a fire fighter, both of which literally mean "he/she/it who puts out fires".
Do you have examples of homophones or hononyms? Maybe a history involving words that look or sound alike? I'd love to hear them.
Examples in other languages:
FRENCH: I've run into plenty of homphones in my short experience -- mer, mère, maire, "sea", "mother", "mayor"; sang, cent, sans, sent, "blood", "100", "without", "smell"; vers, vair, verre, vert, vers, "fur", "worm", "glass", "green", "toward"; vingt, vint, vin, "20", a form of "to come", "wine"; cours, cour, court, class, courtyard, form of "to compete". I'm much less experienced so I'm unsure with homonyms -- vers is one of the few I can think of ("towards" or "verse"), but I'm sure there are more!
JAPANESE: Because of the sheer number of loanwords from Chinese -- a language which contained tones and consonants that Japanese didn't -- many characters have the same pronunciation. Several famous sentences are made with heterographs: 貴社の記者は汽車で帰社した, KISHA no KISHA wa KISHA de KISHA shita, "The news reporter from your company returned via steam train," or 橋の端を箸をもって走る, HASHI no HASHI wo HASHI wo motte HASHIru, "Running to the end of the bridge with chopsticks." Single-word examples include itai -- 遺体 - "dead body" or 痛い - "painful"; shinkou -- 振興 - "promotion", 信仰 - "religious belief", 進行 - "advancement", 侵攻 - "invasion", 親交 - "intimacy"; and koushin? There's tons of possibilities here, including 更新, "update, renewal"; 倖臣, "favourite colour"; 口唇, "lips"; 行進, "parade"; 交信, "telecommunications"; 後身, "after (how someone looks after surgery, for example)"; 高進, "acceleration"; 恒心, "steadiness", and about 7,572 others. These words could, concievably, all be homonyms if written in kana (for example, on older computers or by children). Loan words can be subject to ambiguity if the word is ambiguous in its source language -- テープ, teepu, "tape", can refer to scotch tape, an audio tape, &c., just like in English.
HEBREW: Current Israeli pronunciation has made several consonants identical in pronunciation -- א and ע are now both pronounced as a glottal stop, and ק and כּ are both /k/, and so on. This has led to several words becoming homophones that may have not been homophones earlier -- קוֹל, "voice" and כֹּל , "all", are both kol; את, the accusative marker, אט, "shovel", and עט, "pen", are all et. Homonyms include טס, tas, "fly" or "tray"; למה, lama, "llama" or "why"; סב, sav, "he turned around" or "grandpa".
CHEROKEE: Words that are pronounced similarly have the same spelling in Cherokee, so there are no heterographs (everything is spelled as it is pronounced), so sometimes only spoken pitch or context can differentiate certain words -- ᎠᎹ can be either "salt" or "water", depending upon pitch (and younger speakers tend to seldom use pitch!). Other times even the pitch is the same, as in ᎧᎹᎹ, kamama, which is either an elephant or a butterfly. ᏗᎬᏜᏗᏍᎩ, dikdladisgi, can be either a fire truck or a fire fighter, both of which literally mean "he/she/it who puts out fires".
Do you have examples of homophones or hononyms? Maybe a history involving words that look or sound alike? I'd love to hear them.